


Beach Day

by justheretobreakthings



Series: Gentron: Legendary Friendships 2020 [7]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura is a cat person, Aromantic Asexual Keith (Voltron), Day At The Beach, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Keith is a dog person, Post-Season/Series 07, Scars, Team Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:55:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28725459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justheretobreakthings/pseuds/justheretobreakthings
Summary: The pilots of Voltron and the Atlas take a trip to the beach to relax. While there, Allura notices her team's scars, she and Keith have a talk, and Kosmo has a good time.
Relationships: Allura & Keith (Voltron), Allura & Voltron Paladins
Series: Gentron: Legendary Friendships 2020 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1863199
Comments: 7
Kudos: 93
Collections: Gentronweek





	Beach Day

Allura wasn’t sure who had been the one to propose the idea of a ‘beach day’, but it was decided that it was just what the team needed. They had all been given a clean bill of health after recovering from the battle with Sendak, they’d been working hard even while convalescing to assist with reparations, and all in all, it seemed they were all in need of a chance to get away from the Garrison and actually relax for the first time in however long. Plans were made, Allura was dragged on a shopping trip to get some Earth beachwear, and it wasn’t long before they were piled into a Garrison bus, heading out to spend a day in relief from the dry Arizona desert.

The trip had been set up as a pilots-only excursion, just for those who had flown in either Voltron or the Atlas and had been in skies of the battle with Sendak. Plus Sam, as none of the paladins or MFE pilots were trusted to drive a bus; Coran, who threatened to incite a riot if he didn’t get to go along to experience an Earth ‘hydro-excursion’, as he called it; and Kosmo, who had teleported onto the bus without warning as it pulled out of the Garrison campus and refused to budge from his seat.

The beach was about a varga’s drive from the Garrison, and the moment the doors had opened the group spilled out of the bus, practically trampling each other to be the first to race into the water. This particular beach had been reserved, someone on the Garrison staff apparently had set up a time for them with whoever ran the recreation at this lake, so although people dotted the opposite shore and the lake’s surface rippled with the waves kicked up by a motorboat speeding by in the distance, the section of the beach where the Voltron team was set up was undisturbed.

Allura took her time rather than racing out to the water with the rest, instead holding back to help Sam set up the refreshments the group had brought across the tables in the beach’s little picnic shelter, and helping Coran finish applying his sunscreen (Shiro had ardently insisted that he didn’t need to use an entire bottle for a single trip, but Coran trusted neither the weak Earth lotion nor the scorching sun), before she ventured into the lake, enjoying the coolness of the water around her ankles and the way that day’s light breeze tugged at her hair and rippled the brim of her newly-purchased sunhat.

She took a seat along the dock, letting her feet dangle into the water and the sounds of the other pilots lull her as she tilted her head back, pushing her hat back as well so her face could catch the light. The sun was awfully hot out here. There were certain spots back on Altea that got particularly warm, but none that she had ever been to herself; this area here on Earth was certainly hotter than what she was used to. Some of the planets they had been to as Voltron were quite hot as well, but she’d always had her armor on when they’d been to their surfaces.

It was pleasant, she decided, the heat. Especially against the relative chill of the lake, which actually had rather a nice smell. The sand was gritty - sand in Altean deserts was far softer and lighter - but otherwise… this was nice. She could see why Lance had missed this so much.

And speaking of Lance…

“Allura!” Lance shouted, waving at her from the opposite side of the dock. “Allura, watch this!” He squatted, took a breath, then sprang backward, somersaulting in the air before splashing into the water.

Scattered cheers arose from the others, and Hunk followed him into the water, yelling out, “Cannonball!” before jumping up, curling into a ball, and sending an enormous splash surging over the dock.

Lance’s head popped up behind the dock moments later, and he shook his sopping hair out before grinning at Allura. “Did you see?” he called. “Were you watching?”

“Yes, I was watching,” Allura called back.

“You ever see anyone do that before?”

“Well…” She could recall, as a child, standing in awe on the floor while staring up at the pool that stretched across the ceiling, watching some of the most graceful residents of the castle move through the water as smoothly as if it was air, twirling and flipping like it was a dance. Alteans, she had come to learn, were simply more athletically gifted than humans. But at Lance’s eager face, she shook her head. “No, never, that was very impressive, Lance.”

“Ha!” Lance beamed in delight as he hoisted himself back onto the dock and hurried along it, his heavy footfalls shaking the entire dock as he went toward the deeper water. “Okay, now watch the front flip, look how much air I can get!”

“I’m watching!” Allura said, and she did just that as Lance readied himself, rolling his shoulders and bouncing on his knees in preparation. The sun was hitting directly onto his back, his skin reflecting the shine like bronze, and as Allura watched, a hint of a frown tugged at her lips.

She had never noticed it before, but in the bright light, it stood out so clearly: an uneven smattering of scars across his lower back, splatters where the skin was paler and pinker than it should have been.

She recognized the pattern. Left over from that explosion so early in the days of his role as paladin, when Sendak had invaded the castle. Sure, there had been a bit of a time gap between when he’d first been injured and when he’d made it to the cryopods, but… and she had seen Lance before in a bathing suit, hadn’t she? In very different lighting, sure, and with his back against a chair for a lot of it, but still, how had she missed something so - ?

Allura was pulled from her musings when Lance flipped into the water, and she answered with a smile as his head popped back up over the edge of the dock and he demanded to know how cool he had looked.

As he climbed back onto the dock, her eyes roved along the wooden planks toward Hunk, who was leaning over the edge of the dock, splashing water onto Lance’s face and laughing at the latter’s spluttering. His legs were stretched out, and Allura could see the line of raised skin on the left one, the place where it had been caught by that spiked staff carried by a guard at that Hazeron base they had raided, the weapon having broken clean through the armor guarding his legs. Allura had helped Pidge fix the armor afterward, and Hunk’s leg was back in working order within two quintants, but the mark was still so obvious when one knew to look for it.

And speaking of Pidge, she was wading on the shoreline outside of the dock, hands sifting through the surrounding sand and grasses as she searched for shells and rocks. As she straightened up and turned to examine one of her finds in the sunlight, her midriff was visible between the two halves of her swimsuit, a splash of pink scarring standing out below her navel. A hit from an energy rifle during a nearly-failed infiltration mission. Shiro had carried her out of that battle and hadn’t let her go until they were finally back in the Castle’s med bay, and had nearly collapsed in relief when the cryopod began its work and the team was reassured that the gutshot did not mark the end of their youngest paladin.

Now Shiro finally had reprieve from the constant distress, and Allura watched him as he swam through the deeper waters with the MFE pilots, playing some Earth game with a hoop and net that was set up against the dock (basketball, she remembered after a moment of thought - Lance’s family had had a hoop outside their home as well), and he smirked as his arm held the ball high over the water, just far enough that none of the others could reach it.

The physical mementos on him were the most obvious of all. The electronic replacement for his limb, the scar that cut across the bridge of his nose, the graying of his hair - a color that was quite common for Alteans of any age, but which the paladins had informed her was typically a bad sign for young humans. Even with those clear effects from his time with Voltron on display, there were probably more staying hidden. Shiro, she noticed, was the only one of the males here at the beach who wasn’t bare-chested, and instead kept a sleeveless gray shirt on that clung to his torso in the water. Who knew what sorts of marks from battles and missions and, of course, from his time in the arena were under that fabric.

She started to consider it, letting her mind conjure up gruesome imaginings of what sorts of old injuries were being covered up, but was pulled from her musings when the dock beside her shook. Allura blinked over to see that Kosmo, who had been leaping and bouncing through the water since the group had arrived, had teleported onto the dock next to her. He stared at her with inscrutable yellow eyes, a puddle forming from the water dripping off of his sopping coat of fur. His ear twitched and his head started to tilt.

Allura realized what was happening only a fraction of a tick before it came to pass, and hadn’t even fully managed to raise her arms to shield her face before Kosmo began shaking himself dry, throwing buckets worth of water in seconds and drenching both the dock and Allura. Not to mention shaking off a few hairs as well, as she realized with revulsion after discovering that a piece of fur had somehow ended up in her mouth.

She grimaced and spluttered as she tried to get the fur off of her, and scowled up at the wolf even as his owner hurried over, splashing through the shallow water to join them at the dock and pulling Kosmo aside even as the wolf watched Allura struggling, an innocent look on his face, his tail wagging in a manner that seemed almost mocking.

“Sorry,” Keith said. He held Kosmo back as Allura brought her hand to her mouth to try to remove the hair that had landed there. “It’s hard to keep up with him quick enough to stop him when he teleports like that.”

Allura successfully located the hair in her mouth and managed not to retch as she flicked it into the water, then scowled up at Kosmo, who was still wagging his tail and now had his tongue out, straining against Keith’s hold in an effort to lick Allura’s face. “ _Why_ does your wolf constantly insist on making my personal space his own?”

“He just likes attention,” Keith said with a shrug. He loosened his grip as Kosmo started to relent, and moved his hand up to scratch the wolf behind the ears. “I think he just thinks you’re a challenge or something. If you’d pet him like everyone else does, he’ll leave you alone.”

“Or he’ll take it as an invitation to drool all over me,” Allura said.

“Maybe. He’s unpredictable.”

Allura huffed, but she reached out reluctantly to pet the wolf. She grimaced as she did - the fur was damp and sandy and the smell of wet wolf really was not a pleasant one. She limited herself to only a few seconds of patting before she pulled away and leaned down to rinse her hand in the lake. “There. Is he happy now?”

“I don’t - ” Keith was cut off when Kosmo teleported away in a shower of sparks, before reappearing at the other side of the dock right over the basketball that had started to float away from Shiro and the MFE pilots. He landed in the water with a splash, apparently claiming the ball as his own. “Ah. Okay, yeah, he seems satisfied.”

“Good.” Allura dipped her hand into the water one more time for good measure. Lance had once explained to her that humans were very passionate over dividing themselves into ‘cat people’ and ‘dog people’ and having it out. She decided that she was most definitely a ‘cat person’. “Is he going to smell like that for the whole ride back to the Garrison?”

“Probably. Can’t exactly give him a bath out here.”

“Joy,” Allura groaned, straightening her hat.

Keith raised an eyebrow. “You all right? Beach day not been off to a good start or something?”

“No, it’s - ” Allura sighed. “Apologies, Keith, I did not mean to be curt. I’m perfectly fine, I was just a bit, erm, preoccupied…”

She trailed off as the train of thought that Kosmo had derailed righted itself again, and her eyes drifted downward as she gazed at Keith. She’d seen him in a bathing suit once before, but from a distance; some of the little white scars scattered on his arms and around the torso may have been there back then and escaped her notice. But others, surely, she could not possibly have missed even from the other side of the bridge. They were far too large and dark. They had to have been new.

“Where did you get those?” she asked.

“Where did I get…?”

There were a few scars in his collection, so Allura picked one to point to - or, rather, one set, four raised pink lines slashed across his side just below his ribcage. Keith lifted his arm to look at them too. “Oh. That was when I was on that whale thing with Mom. Some of the creatures in the quantum abyss… they didn’t play nice. We took it down, though.”

“I see,” Allura said. “And what about, erm, the one below that?”

Keith frowned at the pocked tan mark poking up from the waistband of his bathing suit. “I think that was, um, one of our raids? Can’t remember exactly, they all kind of blur together after a while. Wasn’t bad enough to warrant a cryopod trip, I know that much.”

Allura nodded, eyes roving back up. She passed over his face - the paladins had pieced together on their own where _that_ scar had come from, and as Keith had never broached the subject with any of them, now wasn’t the time to bring it up - and instead gestured toward his shoulder, which was marred by a shiny pink-and-brown gash several inches long. “And your shoulder?”

“Ah.” Keith’s frown deepened as he slowly reached his opposite hand around to cover the scar. “That was, um, during the Trials of Marmora. Got clumsy, one of the Blades got a good hit in.”

“... You’d been hurt after that?”

“A little. Shiro patched it up for me.”

“Why hadn’t you said anything? To myself, or Coran?”

Keith shrugged. “You were busy.”

“Oh.” She took a deep breath. “I - I hadn’t realized. Didn’t know you’d scarred.”

“Well, I, uh, haven’t exactly been showing it off…” He lowered himself onto the dock to sit by her. “Is that what’s got you all worried? Because I’m over it, you know? It’s healed up, and I forgive for, uh, for - for the stuff after the Trials.”

“It’s - that’s - it’s part of it,” Allura said. “Has Shiro always worn a shirt when swimming?”

“Um…” Keith scratched uncertainly at the back of his neck. “I… don’t think so? Went swimming with him just a couple of times back on Earth before Kerberos, it wasn’t a regular activity for us or anything. Why?”

“I’m trying to determine if it was after the arena that he made the change, if it’s always been that way, or if it was after Voltron.”

Keith paused, frowning thoughtfully at Allura for a long moment before saying, “You know, if there’s something weighing on you, you’re really gonna have to just tell me what it is straight-up. I can’t connect the dots if you’re not direct.”

Allura allowed herself a snort at that. He wasn’t wrong; Keith could be a good listener, but was also terribly oblivious. More than once at meet-and-greets or dinners or parties for the coalition, an alien had tried to flirt with Keith, and Shiro would have to point it out to him long after the fact, always to Keith’s horror. This quality of his made it difficult to be subtle with Keith or drop hints, but it did also mean he wasn’t one to jump to conclusions or read double meanings into things. All in all, he was unique as a confidant.

And since he was the one here to listen, Allura got straight to the point. “I suppose this is the first time I’ve seen the team, erm, wearing so little. I’d never noticed all of the, er… scars.”

She watched as Lance strode across the opposite side of the dock, Hunk close behind him, heading back onto the sand and toward the picnic shelter. From this distance, the scarring on Lance’s back and Hunk’s leg was nearly invisible, the sort of thing that you’d only see if you knew what to look for. Which she did.

Keith, though, was following her gaze and frowning toward his teammates, and it was likely he spotted the scars too, now that it’d been brought up. “Well, we have been spending a while fighting an intergalactic war,” he said. “That tends to lead to injuries. Which leads to scars.”

“I know, but I - it hadn’t really occurred to me that there’d be…” She sighed and brought her eyes down from Lance and Hunk to instead watch her feet. She traced a circle in the surface of the water with the tip of her toe before saying, “Sometimes I think I haven’t been a very good princess.”

“Wait, how do you mean?”

Allura sighed. “You know I was raised from birth to eventually take the Altean throne. I spent my life learning everything I could both about Altea, and about leading the people. My father - between Voltron and Altea, there was so much responsibility he was balancing, responsibility to so many people, and he pulled it off. Even when off protecting planets in other galaxies, he still was able to keep Altea flourishing, be aware of the problems that needed solving and come up with solutions.

“Then when he’s gone, and I have to step up, step into his shoes, I can’t even handle the responsibilities of just Voltron, with no planet to rule in addition. I hadn’t even noticed you’d been injured after the Trials, I hadn’t realized anyone had scarred… So many times, you all have been hurt on my watch.” She stilled her foot, watching the water settle around the toes. “How could I ever have thought I could have become the ruler of all of Altea when even the responsibility of five paladins was too much for me?”

Keith was quiet for a long moment, and Allura let the background sounds of slashing and calling voices and that distant motorboat fill the space between them. Finally Keith took a deep breath and said, “Do you remember that first battle I led as Black Paladin? When we went face to face with Lotor and his generals and ended up all separated with our Lions down?”

“I remember,” Allura said. “Not going to forget my first time in Blue.”

“Yeah. I really, really did a horrible job leading, didn’t I?”

Allura grimaced. “Well, you certainly made some… errors in judgment. And things could have gone better.”

“Allura,” Keith said, fixing her with a flat stare. “Don’t sugarcoat it. I sucked.”

“... I mean, I wasn’t going to be the one to say it.”

“Shiro kept telling me that I should be the one to step up in his stead once he was gone, and I had told him, over and over again, that I wasn’t ready to be a leader. And you know what? I was completely right. I wasn’t ready at all. I really screwed things up, and, hell, I was making mistakes left and right during that first stint as Black Paladin. And after I came back, I was still messing up. After that battle with Sendak, we all wound up _hospitalized_. That was under _my watch,_ that everyone got hurt like that.”

“Keith - ”

“No, wait, I’m still going. I wasn’t ready to be a leader. I still don’t think I am, not entirely. But, well…” He chewed his lip for a moment in thought before continuing, “Shiro also was the one to tell me to apply to the Garrison, back when we first met. And of course I took a lot of convincing. I had a knack for flight sims, but I still definitely wasn’t ready to go for something like that. My first semester at the Garrison, I was a wreck. I was behind in a lot of academics, on account of moving between foster homes all the time, so Shiro and his fiance were constantly having to tutor me so I could keep up, and I was still losing my temper and getting into fights and not trusting anyone and… basically, I hadn’t been ready to join a prestigious military academy, and it showed.

“And yet, well, I did get better. Eventually. I made fighter class, kept my grades up, broke some sim records. One more thing Shiro told me all the time: that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. That I’d get better.”

Allura frowned down at her feet in the water for a few seconds longer, then moved to look at Keith’s face. “So, why exactly are you telling me this?”

Keith shrugged. “I dunno. Just… it’s a really big thing, leading Voltron. Being thrust into a big important new position - I don’t think it’s something you can ever be ready for, not really. It’s all new and there’s a lot of pressure and you suddenly have so much weight on your shoulders. Shiro was basically famous back on Earth as the leader of his generation of astronauts, and we still had mistakes and injuries and stuff when he was Black Paladin. I was following his footsteps for years and was his right-hand man when we got started with Voltron, and I was a total mess in the first handful of missions.

“You’re a teenager who was raised in peacetime, preparing to have, if I remember Coran’s Altean history lessons correctly, whole boards of advisors and lawmaking houses and delegates from all over the planet to work with while you were leader, which you didn’t expect to happen until, what, decades down the line?”

“Actually, the average Altean lives to be around four thousand decaphoebs old.”

Keith blinked. “Jesus. So, um, _way_ down the line. Basically, you weren’t ready to be leading us. And so you made a few missteps and overlooked details you maybe feel like you shouldn’t have. But you see the scars _now_. And, look.” He knocked his fist unflinchingly into the scarred skin on his shoulder. “It’s fine now. It’s all healed up. I think there’s still some, um, healing we all need to do - in more than one sense - but, well, we’re getting better at it, I think. And Allura? No one blames you for the scars. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

Allura smiled softly. “Perhaps we could both use that reminder more often, hmm?”

“I guess,” Keith sighed. “It’s not always easy to remember, is it.”

“Well, thank you, Keith. For reminding me now.” She tilted her head back up to the sun. “I hope I haven’t wasted too much of our beach trip. I know this was supposed to help us relax.”

Keith snorted. “Don’t know how anyone can be expected to relax in a place where sand is constantly getting into places where it absolutely does not belong.”

“Didn’t you grow up in a desert?”

“Yeah but that’s _dry_ sand. Dry sand is fine. _Wet_ sand, though, that stuff is evil.” He scratched a hand through his hair. “I’m gonna be finding this stuff in my shower for days.”

Allura laughed. “Lance does always insist that you have no idea how to relax. He may have a point.”

“Yeah, well, Lance is a - ”

“Hey, guys!” a voice interrupted, and Keith nearly toppled forward off the dock in surprise as Lance popped up behind them on the dock.

“How are you, Lance,” Allura said, grinning as Keith tried to regain his balance.

“We’re gonna try and start a game of Greased Watermelon,” Lance said. He gestured up toward the picnic shelter where Hunk waved to them, holding what Allura had thought was going to be a snack for the group later: a large green melon, its surface now slick and shiny with cooking oil. “You guys in? The more players you get, the more fun it is.”

“What the hell is Greased Watermelon?” Keith asked, raising a brow.

“It’s basically like a combination of Steal the Bacon and tackle football, except you play it in the water, and instead of a rubber pig, you use a greased watermelon.”

“You - what?”

Lance rolled his eyes. “I’ll explain it more before we start, okay? You joining or what?”

“Oh, I might as well,” Allura said. “I could use a spot of fun. Come on, Keith, let’s join.”

Lance let out a whoop and started running along the dock to rope the others into the game, and Keith groaned. “You seriously want to play some oiled-up fruit game Lance came up with?”

“Well, not really,” Allura said as she slid off the dock to wade into the water. “But isn’t that part of being a leader, hm? Engaging in group bonding, encouraging your teammates’ endeavors?” She held out a hand to him. “Come on, Black Paladin. Let’s not discourage them.”

Keith groaned again, reluctantly accepting the hand and letting her tug him into the water. “I just gave you a whole pep-talk,” he whined. “I’ve done my leaderly duty for today.”

“Your work is never done. Come now, it’s beach day. Let’s try to have a spot of fun.”

**Author's Note:**

> [I tumble.](https://justheretobreakthings.tumblr.com/)


End file.
